Page:William Zebulon Foster - Strike Strategy (1926).pdf/74

 relative value of their own demands and also those of the employers. They must understand which are "bargaining points" and which are fundamental in the given situation. They must learn how to advance their main demands by sacrificing non-essentials, and how to prevent the employers from doing this. They must avoid secret negotiations and understandings, which betray their case to the employers and compromise them in the eyes of the rank and file workers. They must take the masses into their confidence as to the progress of events.

Where the right wing is in control, the left wing must insist upon open negotiations and frank publicity. And when the reactionaries try to sell out the workers at the conference table, as Lewis did the heroic Connellsville miners at the close of the 1922 strike, the masses must be mobilized, through referendum votes, protest meetings, etc., against the settlement to prevent its endorsement. And naturally, where the employers seek to bring about strike settlements through the company unions, as the meat packers did in 1920, the left wing must fight against it to the last ditch.

In strike settlements it is necessary to guard against the right danger of grossly over-estimating the employers' strength and consequently of weakly abandoning the struggle, and also against the ultra-leftist danger of over-estimating the workers' forces and thus leading them into hopeless struggle when much could be saved by a settlement.

Then there is the grave danger of "second" strikes. Often these occur immediately after formal settlements. They are usually brought about by misunderstandings at the conference table, sudden provocative attacks by the employers, or over-militancy on the part of the victorious strikers. Such "second" strikes rarely get the hearty support of the masses of workers. They nearly always result in failure. The fatal national packing house strike of 1904